Democrats hold hearings on war as elections draw near / 3 ex-military officials say Rumsfeld should be replaced

Edward Epstein, Chronicle Washington Bureau

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, September 26, 2006

2006-09-26 04:00:00 PDT Washington -- Democrats kicked off on Monday what they say will be a relentless effort to return the focus of the midterm congressional election campaign to the issue that polls show is the nation's No. 1 concern -- the unpopular, protracted war in Iraq.

Not coincidentally, the issue is also one of the Democrats' strongest and provides them with perhaps their best opportunity to tie Republican candidates for the House and Senate to President Bush and the war.

The return to the war issue comes as Bush's popularity has ticked upward and gas prices have tumbled, perhaps relieving some voters' economic anxieties. At the same time, Republicans have pilloried Democrats for allegedly being soft on fighting terrorism. That combination has boosted GOP hopes about holding their House and Senate majorities on Nov. 7.

Six Democratic senators and one renegade GOP House member held an ad hoc Capitol Hill hearing Monday to take testimony from three high-ranking former military officers who are critical of the way the Bush administration has conducted operations in Iraq. There have been previous ad hoc hearings on Iraq, but they focused on contracting irregularities that the Democrats say have resulted in the wasting or disappearance of billions of dollars.

The effort, which party leaders say will be pounded like a drum through the midterm elections, is scheduled to continue today when anti-war House Democrats, led by Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma, will hear from more Washington insiders critical of the Iraq war.

It might be good politics, which could produce some headlines, but Democrats maintain it is good policy. They say they called the ad hoc hearings because the Republican-led Congress has abdicated its responsibility to scrutinize the Bush administration's conduct of the 42-month-old war.

"Politics is not the point," said Brendan Daly, spokesman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, who would become House speaker if Democrats pick up a net of 15 seats on Nov. 7. "It's to get the oversight that this Republican Congress won't provide."

Yet, Daly added, Democratic congressional candidates will make Iraq a daily theme in October, after Congress recesses soon for the campaign. There will be news conferences, town hall meetings and forums to discuss all aspects of the war.

Republican congressional leaders dispute the notion that they haven't been sufficiently vigilant. And while few Republican candidates focus on the Iraq issue in their campaigns, the Republican National Committee puts out a weekly "Iraq Facts" news release highlighting progress in Iraq based on press clippings and government statements.

In a statement, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the Senate majority whip, called Monday's hearing a "stunt."

"Today's stunt may rile up the liberal base, but it won't kill a single terrorist or prevent a single attack," McConnell said.

The Republicans, from Bush on down, also tie the Iraq war to the overall war on terror, a position the Democrats reject. The Democrats feel their position was bolstered by news stories over the weekend saying that a national intelligence estimate reported that the invasion of Iraq has fueled international Islamic extremism.

The Democrats' election season strategy is based on poll after poll showing that the public views Iraq as the top issue this year. The latest CBS News/New York Times poll found that 22 percent of adults surveyed say the war is the No. 1 issue in the campaign, followed by terrorism in general at 14 percent and the economy at 11 percent.

The party has long viewed Iraq as an opportunity. Candidate recruiters went out of their way to find Iraq veterans to run for office to help burnish the party's national security image and to make it clear that Democrats, while critical of the war, support the troops.

The Democrats also have maintained repeatedly that Republicans haven't sufficiently probed all aspects of Bush's war policy. "Whether you are Democrat or Republican, for or against the war, oversight is an important congressional function ... and we've had virtually none of it," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said at Monday's hearing.

Republicans were invited to the hearing, but the only one who accepted was Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina, a conservative who for more than a year has been a leading critic of Bush policy.

"The war will be one of the top two or three issues" in November, said Jones, who is in a tough re-election fight.

"I think Republicans should be holding hearings like this on pre-war intelligence," he said. "To hold hearings is not to say we'll pull out tomorrow. It's to understand what we should have done as policymakers."

The witnesses at the hearing, who have criticized Bush policy before, called for the replacement of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

"Our nation is in peril, our Defense Department's leadership is extraordinarily bad, and our Congress is only today, more than five years into this war, beginning to exercise its oversight responsibilities," said retired Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who commanded the First Infantry Division in Iraq.

The Democrats at the hearing, who generally favor a phased withdrawal from Iraq, didn't press the ex-military men about their recommendation that more manpower is needed and that it would be a bad idea to pull out from Iraq. Instead, the witnesses said, a long-term commitment to Iraq will be needed to stabilize the country.

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